


the beast that shouted love (after the end of the world)

by Lockstep



Category: Monster (Anime & Manga)
Genre: 1990s, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Reconciliation, Tags May Change, in karl and lotte's defense it is very difficult to Not be gay for the twins, lottenina is the established relationship and karlhan is the pining one btw, sorta kinda not really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:40:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21609358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockstep/pseuds/Lockstep
Summary: Johan wakes up, and all that that signifies.
Relationships: Johan Liebert/Karl Neuman, Nina Fortner/Lotte Frank
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	1. ovid, on the burden of love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karl visits a hospital room.

No matter how tightly Karl Neuman kept his hands pressed together between his knees, he still felt as though he was taking up too much space. And as he rubbed a thumb over the ragged bed of his other thumbnail, he couldn’t help but wish Lotte was there with him; she had a way of making a space feel bigger. She owned the space, better than he ever could. Here, wedged between armrests of a waiting room chair, Karl felt like an interloper.

But Lotte had encouraged him to go, despite the rainy day. Said she’d meet him there another time, since she was busy with her new job that day, and that he should say hi to Johan for her.

“Mr. Neuman?” a woman with kind eyes stepped out of a door, and politely beckoned to him. “The nurses are finished. You can see him now.” Her chipper tone was enough to draw Karl out of his stormcloud of a head, and he bent to pick up the wrapped parcel he’d brought, tucking it beneath his arm as he rose and followed her in.

“Right here,” the receptionist gestured to a closed door, and Karl stared at the doorknob as if it were a coiled snake. He opened his mouth, uttering a soft sound, maybe the beginnings of a question— _Is it really alright? I can do this? I’m not his family. I don’t even really—_

She was already gone, and that half-formed, tense thought settled restlessly in his mind like a snared animal. It clawed at his throat, the thoughts he’d been trying to stave off.

Schuwald kept much from him, after that frightful day. For the longest time, Karl accepted it, wanting to respect his aging father’s grief process. Karl was simply happy that he was alive, even if the smoke from the fire had left Schuwald with a more rattling cough than usual. But there had been times, lapses in tight-lipped judgement, when his father would reflect on a certain young man, and what became of him.

_Better that Karl didn’t know; that day, the flame-scorched ground had opened under Schuwald’s feet, and he’d gazed into the calm, beautiful eyes of hell. Better that Karl knew those eyes only as beautiful, and nothing more. Nothing more than beautiful._

Karl was no idiot. Johan had left that day, and his father wouldn’t speak of him when asked. Not at first. Karl had grabbed at every scrap his father gave him. No one else saw anything. No one else knew. He knew something had happened, that perhaps Johan had been involved, whether as a victim or… 

“I’m sorry, can I help you, sir?” a man’s voice alerted him, and Karl looked up with a startled flicker in his tired eyes. The man wore teal scrubs—a nurse. Karl shook his head and smiled, murmuring a word of apology before grabbing the doorknob and letting himself inside.

Wide windows were shut, the room dim and filled with the dull sound of rain hitting the glass behind the curtains. Karl shuffled further inside and tried to avoid looking at the foot of the bed, or the privacy curtain covering the rest of it despite the other bed in the room being empty. Light… there had to be a lamp in here, something that wasn’t the harsh overhead fluorescents.

Karl found it standing in the far corner and clicked it on, casting the room in a soft orange, casting his shadow in kind against the foot of the bed. He held his breath and turned, and the injured thing in his head was soothed momentarily by a hazy blanket of relief and familiarity. In spite of everything, he looked the same—his face, paler than ever before, wore soft contours in the lowlight. Johan’s hair was short, growing back slowly from the surgery, and Karl’s fingers itched to reach out and comb it into proper volume.

It was these sorts of thoughts that made Karl feel far too big for the space, made him feel like he would crush every delicate thing in reach with his heavy, aberrant thoughts. Karl cleared his throat and shed his outer jacket, letting it drape haphazardly over the back of a chair by the bedside. He set the parcel down, too, not knowing what order to do things in. Not knowing if he should be here. Not knowing who Johan was. Not knowing where he’d been.

The snare dug into flesh and Karl felt wet spring in his eyes, as his clouding gaze traced the lines of stitches up the side of Johan’s temple. “Oh, Johan,” his voice ached out of him as his vision blurred with tears. Karl hurriedly rubbed at his eyes and sniffed, clearing his throat again and venturing to speak, this time, though he wasn’t sure if there were ears to hear him. But this was familiar, as he’d realized before. He’d been in this very position before, with Johan’s golden swath of hair against the clinical white sheets of a hospital bed, when the boy had fainted in the library and been whisked away to the campus infirmary. Karl had looked at things too closely then, too, things like at that old scar that Johan had on the right side of his forehead. Looked at things he wasn’t supposed to, and kept them in his heart. Details, beautiful and delicate details—how horrible he was, to only stare when he knew he wouldn’t be caught.

“I brought something,” Karl began, voice thick with the weight in his chest but making an effort to sound friendly. “Um… I realized just how much I missed our ah, Latin tutoring sessions, and… Well, my father’s getting older faster than I can keep up with. He likes listening to it more than ever, and…”

Karl trailed off for a moment, feeling too tall. He scooted the chair closer with the back of his heel and carefully sat down, reaching for the parcel he’d placed on a bedside table. “I think I’ve gotten better at it,” he finally finished, once he’d slipped an old book out of its protective paper seal. The rain would have ruined it; he thanked Lotte’s preemptive thinking once more, and once more, wished she was here. She would carry this one-sided conversation much better than Karl ever could.

As Karl thumbed over the corner of the book, his eyes lidded with memory. Mouth threatened to tug up at the corners. “You always had such an interested expression on your face when I recited it back to you. You’d smile when I messed up, and… you’d smile when I did well, too. I never knew until the end of the passage, what your smile… was for.” He held the book white-knuckled in his lap, like it would fall to pieces if he didn’t. Or perhaps he himself would fall to pieces. _I don’t know who you are._

He refused to think about it. Something had happened, and thoughts like those would do no one any good. Karl thumbed a tab bookmark and opened the book, sniffing away the last etch of emotion that lay gnarled in his throat. “I figured I could read some to you now. I know you probably can’t hear it, but… but maybe that’s for the best, you know?” he cringed and let out a soft laugh, trailing off quickly. Karl stared for a moment longer, at the placid nothingness on Johan’s face, and took a breath. “Alright… alright.”

> _“What should I say this to be, that the mattresses seem so hard_  
>  _To me, nor do my covers stay on the bed,_  
>  _And I have passed the night—how long—empty from sleep,_  
>  _And the weary bones of my turning body ache?_  
>  _For, I think, I should know if I was being tempted by love_  
>  _Or does it steal in and cleverly do harm by hidden skills?_  
>  _Thus it will be: the slender arrows stick in the heart,_  
>  _And savage Love turns the occupied heart.  
>  _ _Do we surrender, or do we inflame the sudden fire by struggling?  
>  _ _Let’s surrender: the burden becomes light which is borne well..._

Slowly, he’d found peace in the words flowing from his mouth. His mind was no longer in a hospital room, but warm with thoughts of home, of past. Whether tucked over a book in Johan’s apartment with the blonde man’s face to the window, ears ever listening, or standing in his father’s sunroom, reciting skillfully the Latin tongue that Johan had combed into pliancy. He kept reading. He felt his tense shoulders soften as he fell into a better posture. ‘ _Chin up. Project. You have a good voice.’_

Johan’s praise and encouragement was something Karl would carry with him and replay in his head over and over until he’d wringed it out of all its sweetness. It still had some yet.

> _“You will go with jewels on your wings, with jewels of various colors_  
>  _In your hair, golden yourself in your golden chariot._  
>  _Then you will also burn not a few, if I know you well;_  
>  _Then also in passing you will give many wounds.  
>  _ _Your arrows cannot stop, even if you yourself want it;  
>  _ _Your fiery flame injures with a close heat…_

When he finally finished, he was breathing a little fast. Somewhere along the line his quiet voice had grown more passionate, more open, and he was thankful that he’d closed the door before. If he was caught reading Latin poetry to a comatose person, Karl felt he’d shrivel up in shame and realization that this was more for his own benefit than for Johan’s.

Karl was no stranger to acting on impulsive thoughts. Bringing the book had been one of them. Actually _reading_ anything from that security blanket of his had been another. 

And here was a third—Karl reached out and touched Johan’s arm, his eyes drifting over the gauze and IV drip tube. His friend’s skin felt papery under his touch, the jut of his elbow sharp and unfamiliar in its prominence. Karl wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him without sleeves. It was such a funny thing, such a strange notion. Sharp suits and high-necked sweaters, smart fabrics and stylish colors, all foregone for a limp hospital gown.

His hand traveled downwards, towards more familiar territory. “Do you remember the rooftop?” Karl felt himself speaking before he could think, as his palm settled against the rise and fall of Johan’s knucklebones. The old book lay open on his lap, pages pinching in tiny folds where his body curled around it in attempts to lean closer to the object of his most secret affections. It was all Johan could claim to be, in that moment—an object. Silent and cold, though his pulse still marched steadily along. Karl felt it, barely-there against his fingers as he ventured to take Johan’s hand into his own, his fingertips trailing vein-striped wrists. Such indulgence—a shudder ran through Karl, a sensation that tasted like sadness when it reached his throat. “You held my hand when I was about to cry. And I looked up, and there you were… crying in my place.”

He ached. God, how Karl ached. “Please wake up,” his voice dripped out thick from his squeezed throat. He brought the hand (heavy, stiff, where was that delicate touch?) to press to his forehead to the backs of pale fingers. “Please… please…” the word repeated softer than death. Each time, he buried the wounded thing in his head deeper and deeper with dirt, suffocating his doubts, choking out the past. “I want to know you. I want to know who you are. I don’t care that I never did. I don’t care.”

No one had ever cried for him before. And as Karl wept tears against Johan’s forearm, cradling close that frail pulse, it occurred to him that he’d never cried for anyone else before, either.

* * *

There was someone in his room. It was a strange notion to call it _‘his’_ room, given he was nothing but a visitor here, an impermanent body in an impermanent bed with impermanent pokes and prods and comments from voices he knew but could scarcely place.

Quite unlike the faceless voices that he usually got, this one carried with it a familiarity. Not so familiar that his recognition was immediate, but familiar enough to inspire some strange inklings of comfort.

There was Latin, too, familiar passages—were they being read to him, or simply a memory? He couldn’t tell. He didn’t have to. There was contact, different than the cold instruments of the doctors and nurses. There were tears dripping against his hand and forearm. _I am awake. I am awake. You sound so terribly sad..._ Though his eyes would shift beneath eyelids, damnable lips would not utter a sound.

The familiar voice would never stay long, but it came back again and again. Sometimes with words, sometimes with nothing but breathing. There was no way to measure time in between the visits in this state, no way to see the charred gaps in the burnt film strip of his mind. Pockets of almost-clarity, almost-familiarity were what he clung to, and craved.

Until there came a day when the voice that greeted him was a different breed of familiar altogether. It ignited something in him—twisted fear and guilt and suffering, suffering he caused, suffering he endured. It spoke of the love of a mother, and of a name. His name. The name his mother gave him. But the body with a heartbeat didn’t have a name, certainly not one given by any sort of mother, so this news came as quite perplexing to him.

The body opened his eyes on a sunny morning in a hospital bed in Munich. Most of the wires and beeping things were easy to remove. His limbs were like frail, twisted branches, fingers working slow and clumsy at the tubes in his arm, at the wires that watched his pulse. _And I have passed the night—_ “How long,” words stumbled out of his mouth and into the light, uncertain and ungainly as a newborn fawn. — _empty from sleep, and the weary bones of my turning body—_ Familiar. Familiar voice. A voice that he knew from a time when played the part of a man, just a simple man, and not a monster.

Memories came with each unsteady step towards the window. The curtains that billowed against his paper-thin skin were the softest things he’d ever felt, at least for a long while. He’d done something terrible, so terrible, and quite certainly more than one thing. He wondered if remorse would come—or if it had already come, in the form of his deteriorating body. The young man (for now he was a man again, and not so much just a body) saw his reflection, faint, in the glass of the window, squinting against the blinding outside light, squinting against gaunt cheekbones.

He knew this face. It was his face. His hair was longer, though—and he decided he liked it.

The heart monitor had sustained a long beep for a less than ten seconds, but it was enough time to alert the nurses. The man would have to move quickly. Push, push the window open, climb, move legs, step, scrape scrape scramble skin, over the windowsill… thud, into grass and dirt. He could move, but not well, and the wall was a necessary support as he began to walk. Uneven gait—one leg wouldn’t cooperate with the rest, and the man would chastise it if he had the breath.

Inside that room, no longer his room, it would appear a miracle had happened. The blonde man that lay there no longer, spirited away into the morning dew. A search would be called, because the man couldn’t have gone far, but this particular man had always been rather good at slipping away. Not this time, though. This time, he would be found lying on the cobblestone, nail beds bloody from clawing prone towards the fountain at the center of the hospital courtyard. The man was just a body again—and his plan to fill his lungs with water, and finish the unfinished job, went unrealized.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First proper multi-chapter fic... and first fic on ao3! Be gentle with me haha. I'm so bad at tags.  
> I've had this idea in my head for ages but never quite knew how to get it down on paper. I got a little too into my own head about making sure characters stay fully true to their canon counterparts, but with a character like Johan, that's extremely difficult. Given the nature of how the series ends, I know Johan could be considered something of a blank slate post-canon, but I'm not super fond of the idea of him being a completely remade person. I think surely he's got to keep a lot of traits from before the ending, but deciding which ones is the difficult part. Either way I really hope you'll enjoy this whatever-it-is!! I admit this started as me indulging two pairings that I think deserve a lot more love than they get, and thinking about how they would work in a post-canon setting. Comments/kudos are always loved and welcomed!


	2. a phone call can alter the air of a room quite suddenly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nina receives some troubling news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter! After a long wait; I'm still trying to get the hang of these characters!  
> No chapter warnings this time. Hope you enjoy!

Nina Fortner heard the click of the receiver against her ears, and she released her white-knuckled grip on the phone as she returned it to its dock where kitchen counter met wall. Her throat had begun to constrict now that the voice on the other end of the line was no longer prompting her for responses. She stared at the phone, at the coiled phone cord wrapped around her index finger, so tight it would leave a mark, and began to untangle it as soon as she’d regained her breathing. It was unsteady breathing, but it was breathing. And after a sweeping smattering of pitter-patter fingers on laminate countertop, a nervous, rising-panic hum in her chest, she returned to washing the dishes from last night’s dinner. Only now did she thank herself for leaving them for the next morning. Without something to do with her hands, Nina wasn’t sure what would happen.

She’d been focusing on a particular stain (for far too long, before recalling that this plate was simply stained, and it had been bought secondhand that way) when the front door unlocked. Nina didn’t turn around until Lotte’s tired, but sharp voice met her ears. “Ugh, _god_ —” A shuffling thud of a bookbag hitting the couch cushions distracted Nina from her spiralling thoughts. “I can’t stand those chauvinist board assholes. Fenster’s gonna crumble right out from under them, and I’m gonna laugh.” Nina finally turned to peek at a red-in-the-face Lotte over her shoulder with a small, unsteady smile.

“Rough day?” she asked, though her voice came out more strained than playful. Lotte paused and looked up at her, her bright eyes wide behind her glasses. Embarrassment washed over her and joined with the flush on her cheeks, sighing and nodding as she stepped out of her shoes. She moved closer with a sheepish look on her face.

“Yeah—yeah, give me those, though,” Lotte said gently, touching Nina’s back once in warning before reaching for the plate in Nina’s hands. “When did you get home?” she offered, clearly not wanting to dwell on the hellish experience she’d had at work.

“About three. I need to study more… for…” Nina’s voice came out uncertain and slow, something that drew Lotte’s attention as she pumped some dish soap onto the rag she’d picked up. Lotte knew Nina had been studying like mad for her next exam; she didn’t envy the stress of graduate school one bit, especially not law school, especially not the first year. Nina met her eyes, and felt something hollow in her chest; she folded her arms to contain the nothingness that she felt opening inside of her. The doctor’s voice on the other line still burned her ears, still chilled her fingertips to nervous blue. “Johan woke up.”

Lotte stared for a beat, then turned off the water, letting the plate in her hands sink into the half-full sink. She only hastily rubbed her hands on her jeans before reaching out to touch Nina’s arms, pulling her carefully into a hug, and Nina crumpled into the other woman with a shuddering inhale.

“He’s awake right now?” Lotte asked, with a very strong effort to keep her voice soft and calm. She stood on her toes in attempt to support as much of Nina as possible. It was difficult to stay quiet—this was a piece of news that warranted some blurting, but Lotte kept it inside. Nina shook her head, for some reason unable to produce tears, unable to let the gnarled tension in her throat release.

“No, he—” she began, swallowing around it as she buried her cheek and nose into Lotte’s hair, “—they, um… they said it was just for a moment. He was unconscious when they found him out of his bed…” A squeeze from Lotte seemed to finally draw _something_ to Nina’s eyes, a wetness that rimmed them even as she hurriedly blinked it away. “He couldn’t have been able to walk, Lotte. H-he… what was he thinking…?”

It was a question far too pregnant with meaning for Lotte to even begin to try to answer. They didn’t talk about Johan very much, if at all. Just with Karl, when he came to visit their flat. Nina visited Johan on her own, when school allowed her enough free time to make the drive. Each time, however, she felt she had nothing to say. Her visits had grown infrequent, especially as Karl had picked up the slack. These days she simply received weekly reports from the physiotherapist she’d hired to help prevent Johan’s muscles from atrophying. In many ways, Johan had truly become something of an afterthought in her suddenly so busy life.

Lotte’s hand was warm on her back, rubbing slow, soothing stripes up and down. The matter of things was that they only really spoke of Johan in past terms. About how he used to be, the Johan that Karl and Lotte knew. Nina didn’t know how to tell either of them what Johan had done, who Johan was, or at the very least, what Johan tried to be. Inspector Lunge seemed to want to wait until Johan was awake and lucid enough to talk before anything was done, and Tenma… Tenma was everywhere and nowhere, these days. Gone off to parts unknown, helping people in ways Nina could never imagine. She couldn’t help but feel like he would know what to do in a situation like this. It was difficult to say what fate would befall her brother when he finally woke up for good. _If_ he woke up for good.

“Nina,” Lotte’s gentle, dishwashing-damp hands came to cup her face, startling Nina out of her thoughts. “You’ve been stressed out of your mind, lately. And now with this, it’s no wonder you’re feeling so overwhelmed.” She spoke slowly, clearly, and matter-of-factly. Nina hung on her every word, as if they were profound. In a way, they were—especially now, with her mind pulled in so many different frantic directions. “The doctors are taking care of him. For now, let me take care of the kitchen. Go get a little bit of studying done. Or a lotta bit,” she added with a wink, and Nina couldn’t help the small wave of mirth that tugged her mouth upwards.

“A lotta bit is what I need,” she admitted, playing along for a moment, letting the arms she’d wrapped around Lotte like a vice shift until they rested gently on Lotte’s hips. Lotte raised her head to meet Nina’s eyes for a moment, then leaned up on her toes to press a lingering kiss. “Love you,” Nina whispered, quiet but far from hesitant, as soon as Lotte’s lips left hers.

Lotte beamed at her, her smile outshining the worry in her eyes. “Love you, too,” she answered, pushing in on Nina’s cheeks until the taller woman’s lips pursed comically. Nina snorted a laugh and escaped her hold, playfully swatting at her hands with a grin.

“Okay—okay. Call me when you’re about to make dinner. I wanna help!” Nina chirped, and slipped into their shared bedroom, gently closing the door behind her.

As Nina’s eyes wandered the room, she felt that pit open up again, the smile dripping off of her face little by little. She gravitated towards a corkboard over her desk, dotted with pushpins and notes and photographs; a tilted photo of Lotte’s cheek smushed to her own, a sliver of the Eiffel tower behind them; a candid shot of her classmate Thomas’ persian cat, cross little thing that it was, it always knew when Nina was feeling poorly and loved to curl up on her lap and purr the funk away; an old, faded photograph of her foster parents, though it hurt to look at… the board was covered from edge to edge with little pieces of the life that she’d secured, pieces of life she’d chosen to hold onto and make a part of herself. It was a horrible, horrible thing to think about, but after so much time, Nina had begun to think that perhaps it would be easiest for everyone if Johan remained how he was. Asleep, ever-dreaming, and inconsequential.

She felt sick.

Nina had only managed to get through a few pages of her study material, rereading some lines four or five times when they refused to stick. Lotte knocked lightly at her door and peeked her round face through the gap. “Kitchen’s ready to get messy again,” she said, smiling at the back of Nina’s head. “What are you up for?”

Nina rose out of the thick bog of her thoughts, twisting around to smile too-wide at Lotte. “Anything’s fine… do we need to pick up any ingredients, or… anything like that?”

Lotte gazed at her for a moment, then opened the door fully, stepping inside to sit on the edge of their bed. Nina watched her, shoulders tense under the unspoken worries and questions in the air. “I think… there’s enough frozen veggies for a soup of some kind. Could cut up that leftover chicken, too,” Lotte tried for upbeat, but it just tasted wrong. Nina was pale in the face and she hadn’t even gotten any of her colored pens out—a sure sign in Lotte’s mind that not a lot had gotten done.

“Can we invite Karl over?” Nina asked suddenly, swallowing her smile down. It felt fake, _was_ fake. Lotte didn’t want to admit that the idea of sharing a rare moment of time off with the somewhat dense young man was not her favorite plan, but this was different than most times. Lotte didn’t feel much for Johan, other than quiet and uncertain contempt for how even his afterimage plagued Nina at times like this. But Karl understood Nina’s love for her brother, albeit on a far, far different level. Maybe he could provide some comfort in ways Lotte couldn’t. That, too, upset her just a bit, but Nina’s emotional state mattered far more to her than some sniff of jealousy.

“Totally,” Lotte said, once her mind had stopped its short mulling. The relaxed slump in Nina’s shoulders was all the reward Lotte needed for her sacrifice of a romantic evening alone. Lotte’s mouth edged into a kind of mischievous smile. “I wonder if we could convince him to pick up groceries for us.”

Nina’s eyes lit up with the laugh that suddenly bubbled out of her. Oh, it was a mean plan, but… “I mean, we _would_ be feeding him, so…”

The plan was put in motion, by Lotte more than Nina. Nina didn’t trust herself not to spill everything out on the phone to Karl, which could prove disastrous. Karl, for all his pessimism, had very few questions over why he was being invited under such short notice. She had to admit he was doing better with that kind of thing lately. Maybe it was a testament that they were all becoming better friends, or maybe he was just in a decent mood. Lotte never could quite understand him or his mental processes, though she cared for him more than he probably deserved.

That was mean. She hung up the phone and pursed her lips, chewing idly at the inside of her cheek. Work was making her meaner than usual. She didn’t like it—but being a new reporter in an office full of men, whether she had a college degree or not (and she did, dammit) carried with it a certain obligation to grow a thicker skin. Or a spikier skin, in this case. But she didn’t want to get fired, and she didn’t want to bring that anger home, so she thought mean thoughts about Karl instead.

At least he was bringing a hock of ham and a fresh bag of red potatoes, and good company for Nina, though that last bit was rather unbeknownst to him. Lotte wasn’t sure if she wanted to be in the room during that conversation. Between the two of them, Nina and Karl’s sadness over the sleeping blonde angel of a boy was enough to crush the air out of Lotte’s lungs.

She sighed out what she could, and swept into Nina’s room, beelining for the bed and flopping down on it. Nina looked up from her book, brows raised.

“Did he say no?” she asked, and Lotte grunted, shaking her head and rolling over onto her back with an arm slung over her eyes.

“No, he’s coming, bringing meat and potatoes. Stew sounded like an upgrade from soup.”

Nina observed her supine form for a few moments, her expression softening with a smile. She set her pen down—she’d gotten something done, so she didn’t feel quite so bad about it—and scooted out of her chair to climb up onto the bedsheets and settle down against Lotte’s side. Lotte peeked from under her arm as Nina drew closer, an arm and a leg thrown over Lotte’s softer, fuller form. Affection gripped Lotte’s heart, pushing away every worry and stress in her head for a brief, blessed moment.

Nina’s lashes fluttered closed as Lotte’s hand shifted to card fingers through her hair, drawing it gently away from her neck and face. “Thank you,” she said after a silence, tucking the bridge of her nose into the plush of Lotte’s sweater.

Lotte smiled, a little quizzically at Nina’s words as she tucked a few errant pieces behind the shell of her ear. “Any time, I mean… your hair was gonna tickle your face otherwise, so I—”

“No, I mean,” Nina grinned at Lotte’s misunderstanding, nuzzling her nose deeper into the soft fabric. Before she could get out an explanation, a laugh suddenly bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her chest, and she clung even tighter in her embrace. “I mean I want to thank you for being so sturdy throughout all of this. You’re really the best thing for me and I’m just happy you’re here.”

Lotte’s bemused smile softened into a sense of quiet wonder, one that lingered for a few brief seconds before she remembered herself. “O-of course,” she exhaled, short and quiet between them. She was a reporter, and yet, in these quiet moments, she often found herself without words to compare to the simply beautiful ones that Nina wrapped her in. “Of course I’m here. I love you, after all, and you’re the only one who’ll tolerate my dramatic reading of my interview transcripts,” she grinned, finding it easier to lighten the moment with a joke. Nina laughed, and Lotte counted that as a win. A laugh suited her girlfriend so much more than the anxious pallidness that had plagued her so heavily before.

Lotte’s turning cogs stopped short as Nina’s long fingers cupped her face, giving her enough time to close her eyes and relish the gentle pull into a kiss. She craned her neck so that Nina didn’t have to untangle herself from Lotte’s arm.

Either Nina’s kisses had a time travelling effect, or the universe was cruel, because suddenly the doorbell was ringing. Lotte groaned like it bothered her more than it really did that Karl was here already. She’d halfway mumbled an “I’ll get it,” when Nina sat up before she could. Lotte spotted the falling smile on Nina’s face, and propped herself up on her elbows. “You know, we _could_ take the groceries and send him away,” she suggested, her tone just light enough to be joking.

Nina shook her head, forcing a small smile. “No, I’m happy he’s here. He… deserves to know about Johan, too.”

Lotte watched her get up and straighten out the lavender top that had gotten rumpled in their shared embrace. Her brows knitted as she wondered why Nina believed that statement so strongly, and furthermore, the tense tilt to Nina’s brow. “Alright,” she murmured as she sat up as well, then put a hand on Nina’s shoulder to keep her still for a moment. “I’ll let him in, really. You start getting the kitchen and whatnot ready, and think about what you’re gonna say to him. Always nice to have a plan first, right?” She smiled when she felt Nina’s shoulders droop a little with relief.

Nina’s hand came up to touch Lotte’s, and she leaned her head over to press their joined fingers between her shoulder and cheek. “Right,” she murmured with a small smile and a renewed drop of warmth to her voice.

* * *

“Okay, thanks—I’ll be right up,” Karl spoke into the small intercom and picked up the grocery bags he’d temporarily set on the ground to ring Nina and Lotte’s doorbell. This place didn’t have any elevator to speak of, but luckily Karl had been biking a lot more than usual. He could take the stairs with minimal internalized complaining, or at least less than would be normal.

The cumbersome paper bags in his arms weren’t exactly conducive to a painless journey, though, especially not when combined with the satchel strap he wore crossways over his body. His shoulder would punish him later, he could tell. By the time he reached their floor about four storeys up, he turned to clumsily bump his elbow into the door, his poor excuse for a knock muffled further by his thick jacket. Lotte was the one to open the door, almost anticipating the bags that were thrust unceremoniously into her arms. “Thaaank you,” she drawled, and her tone tugged Karl’s attention.

“Oh! Gosh, sorry,” Karl mumbled, relieving her of the heaviest bag and shuffling with metaphorical tail between his legs to the kitchen. Nina was there, her head obscured by an open cabinet. She produced a hefty pot from it, tall and iron, and set it down with a grunt on the countertop.

“Karl!” she called in greeting, giving a wave and trotting over to give him a quick hug. She stepped back with a word of apology as the embrace almost knocked the vegetables loose. Nina stepped aside and guided Karl forward with a hand on his shoulder, motioning to the counter space. Lotte followed with a somewhat sour look on her face, having been delegated to ham-holding duty. Nina’s eyes shone with a mix of mirth and sympathy. “Here,” she chuckled, taking the bag from Lotte and stepping back into the kitchen.

“Thanks,” Lotte murmured, subdued. She watched as Nina began getting ingredients out of bags, saying a few words to Karl and smiling. Lotte sighed through her nose and glanced at the couch, instinctively moving to adjust the pillows a bit. Something to keep her hands busy.

It wasn’t that she was unhappy Karl was here. Karl was Lotte’s friend; she’d argue he was her _closest_ friend, and it was probably true, given how much she couldn’t stand him sometimes yet still enjoyed his company. She still cared deeply for him; gone were the age-old crush feelings, that was for certain, but he still held a place in her heart that she couldn’t—and didn’t want to—shake loose. It wasn’t necessarily that she was jealous, that she had to share the evening she’d planned with her girlfriend with her best-friend-suddenly-third-wheel. Karl’s presence was inoffensive at worst and comforting at best—especially, in this case, for Nina. Even so, she couldn’t put her finger on why her chest felt tight.

But as she fluffed up one of the square pillows that really weren’t comfortable enough for anyone to use as a proper pillow, it dawned on her that she felt like an outsider.

Lotte had known Johan—observed him, more like. She’d watched him read to Schuwald just as she’d watched Karl. But Karl had been (and probably always would be) approachable, simple. Johan conversely had been an enigma that seemed to exude an arms-length barrier. Her curiosity had died little by little the longer Johan had been away, after that incident. Besides, life had moved on rather quickly. It was difficult for Lotte to remember the hazy last few semesters before Nina returned to University and things finally started to feel normal again.

“Hey, Lotte,” speaking of normal, Karl’s voice drew her attention out of her own head and onto his somewhat sheepish face. “How are you, anyway?”

“Did Nina kick you out of the kitchen?” Lotte asked with a patented pursed lip, mocking sympathy. Karl grinned and hunched his shoulders closer to his ears.

“I tried cutting onions with a bread knife, apparently. She was kind about it.”

“A kindness you don’t deserve.” Lotte let the words hang in the air for a brief few beats, then smiled back at him and tossed the sad excuse for a pillow back to the couch cushions to free up her arms. For all of his awkwardness, Karl gave good hugs—Lotte sighed and let some of her tension leak out as she let him hold her weight for a moment.

“Mm. That sounded like a ‘work sucks’ sigh,” Karl mused aloud, and Lotte grunted in irritation, her moment of reprieve from her own buzzing brain promptly destroyed by bringing up _work_ of all things.

“Oh, don’t even talk to me about it.” She sank down on the couch, playfully pushing Karl away from the hug, and leaned back to let her head fall back against the top of the cushions. “I’m so sick of those assholes. I don’t wanna think about them.”

“Sorry,” Karl’s voice came out soft as his weight depressed the seat next to her. “How are you besides that?”

Lotte didn’t answer straight away. It was mostly that these days, she never quite knew how to explain or pinpoint her overarching status. In college it was easy—as a bonafide adult, however, it was more a vague, amorphous canvas of day-to-day routine. “I’ve been good,” she finally settled on, a canned phrase, but it held some truth. “Tired, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Karl agreed noncommittally, his hands between his knees, a common posture. Lotte watched his thumbs flutter against each other for a few moments, counting in her head the amount of seconds it would take for him to keep talking. She was half past the sixth second when he took a breath. “My ah—my father’s health took something of a turn recently. Been in and out of the hospital… tests, all that. He’s fussy and wants to stay at home, but the doctors are pretty insistent...”

It was said with a halfhearted laugh, but Lotte could see right through it. Her brows knitted. “I’m sorry to hear that. He’s old—it’s… to be expected, I guess. But I’m sorry to hear.” She repeated herself without realizing, not liking the heavy air around her friend. She tried for a light squeeze on Karl’s shoulder. His hand came up to touch hers in a silent thanks, and Lotte was once again reminded why they’d invited Karl over in the first place.

An annoyed sound from Nina in the kitchen was Lotte’s saving grace. With one last squeeze on Karl’s arm, she whispered, “Lemme go see what she needs,” and took her leave. This wasn’t like her. Lotte was fairly good at being present, most of the time, and being able to take things seriously, but all this talk of hospitals and sick and dying and loss was making her throat tight. She wanted to be present, too, for both Nina and Karl, when the conversation finally turned towards talk of Johan, but she was starting to wonder if she’d be able to at all.

A well-timed bathroom break could always suffice…

“Need help?” Lotte chirped, finding her pep as she joined Nina in the kitchen. Nina looked up with an intense look of gratitude.

“ _Yes_ , please—this ham’s stubborn, and I think this knife needs sharpening. I don’t want to run to the store just to buy a whetstone, so…”

“Brute force; yes ma’am, on it,” Lotte chuckled, as she held the ham in place and tried not to think about what was to come. For now, dinner—as Nina’s best-effort sawing jerked Lotte’s hands back and forth a centimeter at a time, she let her chattering brain fall beneath the sound of the water on the stove starting to come to a boil.

* * *

One way or another, the stew had turned out pretty good. For a few minutes, there was little conversation at the small, square table; just the sounds of spoons clinking bowls and occasional slurping.

“This turned out really well,” Karl finally broke the comfortable silence with a smile half hidden behind his spoon. Nina beamed, looking genuinely delighted at the compliment.

“Thanks! I didn’t use a recipe this time—granted, I just adapted an old way of making it by replacing a few ingredients, but… hey,” Nina smiled and picked up another piece of bread to dip in her soup. “Maybe I should drop this whole lawyer thing and pick up being a chef?”

As the two laughed, Lotte watched Nina dip her bread and eat it, some small bit of peace settling in her stomach. Nina was eating, and laughing—those frantic breaths and tears from before were a distant echo behind the warm atmosphere that had blossomed in their apartment. Lotte felt herself smile, too, as she continued her meal and listened in on the other two’s chatter.

“Oh, I just remembered,” Nina suddenly interjected a brief moment of silence, “how is that thing going with the, um…” She snapped her fingers a few times in attempts to jog the right words to memory. “With the name change?”

Karl grew sheepish once more, his posture changing as the conversation was directed towards him and his personal life, though he smiled and nodded at her. “It’s going well, I think… not very fast. Nothing legal ever seems to be. But… yeah, with luck, pretty soon I’ll get to officially go by Karl Schuwald.”

There was a wistfulness in his voice that made Lotte’s jaw set with an indignant empathy. She spoke hotly, “I still don’t see why it’s such trouble. Schuwald ought to be able to pull some strings, speed it up? You’ve been at it for months, Karl.”

“Well, with dad in and out of the hospital, like I said…” Nina’s facial expression changed, her eyes darting between Lotte and Karl with a brow-knitted interest. “Influence only goes so far when a lot of people think your mind is failing. For all they know I’m just some kid trying to take advantage of him.”

“You don’t much look like the kind of guy that could take advantage of diddly-squat,” Lotte waved her spoon in a little dismissive arc once she’d eaten the bite of chopped ham it held.

Seeing an opening to speak, Nina leaned forward, lowering her voice to Karl as she placed a hand on the table near him. “You said your father’s in the hospital? I’m so sorry—”

“Ah, yeah it’s… sort of a recent thing, but it was probably a long time coming,” Karl explained with a more solemn lid to his gaze. “We’re taking care of it, though. He’s stronger than he looks,” Karl tried to quip with a not-quite-there smile. 

Nina nodded, trying to smile with him, but the words bubbling up in her throat were making it difficult. “I just… I want to thank you for visiting Johan,” she paused for a short inhale, more self-soothing than necessary, “all this time. It’s cruel to say I’ve been too busy for my own brother, but…”

Karl waited for a beat, then shook his head, his expression turning kind, if not guilty. “No, I’ve enjoyed it. Well—that’s an odd thing to say, I’m sorry. I… it’s no trouble,” he finally got out, and reached out to somewhat awkwardly pat the back of Nina’s hand where it rested on the table. He returned his hands to his lap quite quickly. “I usually read to him when I go—Latin, you know, like we used to study together. But…” He picked up his spoon again and scraped some of the stray ingredients off the edge of his bowl back into the basin as he spoke, the sound of metal on ceramic clinking underneath his words. “I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve had to skip a few weeks with him. I’m sorry…”

Nina’s face fell at Karl’s apologies, and more so at the yawning realization of just how little Karl knew. Of course—of course he didn’t know. He didn’t know that Johan had woken up, and he didn’t know what Johan had done. Just like Lotte didn’t know what Johan had done.

She hurriedly reached for a napkin and covered her mouth, coughing as a wave of nausea gripped her. “Excuse me. It’s fine, Karl,” she suddenly interjected, as the man leaned forward with a concerned look in his eyes. “Excuse me.” She repeated it as she stood up and moved to the bathroom, attempting to walk calmly despite the anxiety crawling through her stomach. Lotte tensed, as if to follow her, then paused and looked at Karl’s lost expression. Lotte’s face twisted for a moment, making a quick decision.

“She’ll be fine—she’s been a little bit under the weather today. Nothing to do with you,” she said, attempting a chipper tone as she reached across to lightly cuff Karl’s shoulder. Karl nodded and made a small noise of understanding, but Lotte could tell his brain was working. She sighed through her nose and stood up, nudging her chair out of the way with an ankle and stepping away. “I’m gonna go check on her really quick. Sit tight, okay?”

Lotte left Karl at the table and gently knocked her knuckles against the wood of the door. “Nina?” she called under her breath, then cleared her throat and raised her voice just a bit. “Can I come in?”

The doorknob turned, and Lotte stepped inside, eyes darting to look for a Nina that was nowhere to be seen. A tug on her pantleg drew her attention down behind the door, where the girl was crouching propped against the wall. “Here,” Nina croaked, and Lotte hurriedly stepped fully inside to close the door behind her. She knelt down, her hands instantly going to Nina’s arms, holding her steady and rubbing warmth back into them. For a moment Nina didn’t speak, just chewed the inside of her lip and tried to breathe steadily. It wasn’t until she turned to meet Lotte’s gaze that a wetness started to rim her eyes. “I can’t tell him,” came the whisper, heavy with guilt and splintering as tears spilled over. “I can’t, Lotte. I can’t.”

“Then you don’t have to,” was Lotte’s automatic answer, shuffling to sit against the wall with Nina and pull her into a hug. She turned her face to kiss the side of Nina’s head fiercely, her grip tight enough to ward off whatever horrible thoughts were plaguing her girlfriend. “What’s wrong, hon?” she whispered it close to Nina’s ear. “Karl isn’t made of glass. You don’t have to shoulder this alone… you know he’d listen if you wanted to tell—”

“I want… things… to go back to the way they were,” Nina whispered back, shaking her head. She felt bad for interrupting Lotte’s encouragement, but she couldn’t take it. She couldn’t even consider it, now; it felt like a weight that would crush her if she made it any more real than it already was. “Things are so simple, and wonderful right now. I love you, and you love me, and we’re _happy_ , even with shitty jobs or hard exams… I like _this_. I want… this to stay.”

Lotte was at a loss for words, so she held Nina tighter, hummed out a soft sound to let her know that she’d heard her. “I do love you,” Lotte murmured back, and it earned her a small chuckle from Nina.

“You do.” Nina pressed the bridge of her nose into Lotte’s cheek, tucking close to hide her face as more tears slipped out. “I just want to pretend it didn’t happen. Is that horrible of me? If he’s asleep, still… If Johan is still asleep, then things can keep going like they are now. And nothing has to… uproot, or change, o-or… fall apart.”

Questions burned through Lotte’s mind like a wildfire. Johan troubled Nina, and she knew this—but Nina was talking as though Johan was some kind of plague, rather than a human. “It’s not horrible,” Lotte wanted to get that out of the way first and foremost, but there was still the matter that the concept of Johan’s mere conscious existence was causing Nina this much grief. They were questions that could wait, certainly. They would have to.

Lotte’s hands moved to cup Nina’s face, brushing away a mix of tears and mascara with her thumbs. She darted in to press a kiss to the other woman’s forehead, and leaned back with a small smile. “We should get your face washed. And I _really_ don’t think Karl’s going to self-destruct if he suddenly sees you without makeup. Unlike most boys,” she added humorously when Nina opened her mouth to protest. Nina smiled in spite of herself, rolling her eyes and carefully rubbing some of the moisture on her cheeks away.

“That’s _not_ what I was going to say,” she murmured, a touch of mirth in her voice as she carefully began to stand up. Lotte was already retrieving a washcloth from the drawer and wetting it with water and a dollop of face wash. Nina took it graciously once she’d found a tie in her pocket to pull back her hair. “Go be with Karl—we kind of left him all alone out there,” Nina murmured, looking a bit more at peace with herself. “And… don’t tell him, okay?”

“Nina,” Lotte’s voice turned serious as she met Nina’s eyes in the mirror, just before they disappeared behind the washcloth. “That’s not my news to tell. It’s yours, and you don’t have to tell it to anyone. Especially not right now.”

Nina peeked at Lotte, her eyes smeared with diluted grey, and though her mouth was hidden, Lotte could feel the smile in them. A quiet, relieved ‘love you,’ came from behind the washcloth as she continued to rub her face, and Lotte felt her heart swell in her chest with fondness.

With that, she exited the bathroom and went on to rescue the poor abandoned boy at the kitchen table. To his credit, he’d stayed put the whole time, just as Lotte had asked—but as soon as Lotte came into view, he seemed to visibly sag with relief. “Things are okay?” he asked, before she could reassure him. She smiled, hands on her hips, and moved to the table.

“Told you. She’s just been a little off lately,” she echoed her previous sentiments as she picked up her bowl and brought it to the microwave to heat up. As the bowl spun lazily inside, she turned to see Karl’s eyes a bit downcast. “Hey,” she called to him, drawing his attention upward. “ _We_ invited _you_ , remember? You’re not burdening us or anything. So stop looking like you are.”

Karl blinked owlishly, floored as always by her intuitiveness (and intrusiveness). “You always could read me like a book,” he muttered. Lotte could pick out two parts affection, one part frustration in his tone, and smiled to herself as she retrieved her bowl before the microwave could start beeping its alarm. “Can’t I have _some_ secrets?”

She took her seat beside him, placing her reheated soup down. “Nope!” she said matter-of-factly, simultaneously reaching over to hook an arm around Karl’s neck and pull him into a rough, friendly hug. A startled peal of laughter shook out of Karl as he fought to keep his seat, one arm clinging to the back of the chair while the other fruitlessly tried to worm out of Lotte’s pinning embrace. Their roughhousing nearly drowned out the sound of the bathroom door opening; it was Karl who noticed a second before Lotte, the two friends stopping short to look up at Nina’s bemused smile.

As Lotte detached herself from Karl’s arm and stood, she reached out to touch Nina’s hand and guide her to her place at the table. “I’ll heat up your soup,” she offered, and Nina made a soft sound of assent, watching Lotte move towards the kitchen before turning her gaze back to Karl. She paused, her smile faltering at Karl’s stare—it was unusually contemplative, and unreadable. She cleared her throat, still standing, and the sound seemed to jolt Karl out of his thoughts.

“Are you alright?” Nina asked, pulling her chair out to sit across from Karl with a worried tilt to her brows. Karl seemed to be avoiding her eyes now, a strange, regretful smile painted uncomfortably over his face.

“Sorry… I’m fine, just…” Karl took a small breath and blinked a few times, before looking up to meet Nina’s gaze. “Last time I visited, I saw Johan’s hair had been getting long, and I was just noticing it for the first time really: without—” he made a small gesture towards his own face with an index finger— “Without makeup especially, you…”

His pause did nothing for the cold mass of dread that was stirring in Nina’s stomach. That gentle, reflective expression on Karl’s face was almost worse, as though the comparison he was about to draw next was a compliment, and not something astronomically disturbing in Nina’s mind. It had only been a notion, a tickle in the back of her mind each time she looked in the mirror at night, just before letting her hair back down from where it had been clipped to wash her face… but hearing it now, Nina sat frozen, not reacting as Lotte set Nina’s bowl of reheated, untouched stew down in front of her.

“...You really do look so much like him.”

Nina managed a few bites of stew that night, though most of her effort was to placate Lotte’s worry. Karl’s words, simple and thoughtless as they were, bit into her skin like a thousand pinpricks. Of course—how could she pretend Johan no longer existed? How could she even think of it? He’d always managed to claim a piece of her life as her ‘other half,’ no matter how hard she tried to make herself feel whole. With Johan tucked away in a hospital bed, forgotten, she wore the face for both of them.

Nina got by with little conversation, occasionally replying when spoken to, and managing to keep something of a smile on her face as Karl and Lotte chatted back and forth. She could tell Lotte was watching her, however, and found it in herself not to jump when Lotte’s foot brushed hers under the table.

A moment later Lotte’s hand found Nina’s white-knuckled fist in her lap, and held it tight. Breathe, it seemed to say. Nina obeyed, and words clawed at her throat as she pushed them down with deep, slow inhales. Karl didn’t need to know. He’d want to, she knew, but he didn’t need to.

And frankly, she lamented silently in her own head as she used her free hand to bring a spoonful of cooling soup to her mouth, she wished she herself didn’t know, either.


End file.
